At last week’s meeting of the Revitalization and Economic Development Committee, made up of a group of city staff, prominent community members and local retailers, city officials once again recapped and discussed the progress and proposed changes to a draft of the city ordinance dealing with commercial property registration of vacant structures.

City Planner Dusty Duley handed out to committee members the latest version of the draft ordinance dealing with some of the long-standing vacant properties in the city, including showing potential changes to the ordinance based on feedback and comments after the draft was presented on Dec. 13, 2017 to the city council.

Duley said he wanted to talk about not only what business owners can do, but what the city can do to help them rent out their vacant properties.

“I wish we had some redevelopment funds where we could provide no interest loans to businesses or even free money to fix up their businesses,” he said. “Maybe we can explore ideas like reducing building permit fees in some situations, filing and processing, those types of things. It may be we can also build some incentives in there as well.”

According to Duley, city officials understood that part of the issue with having the chronic vacant buildings such as the Van Hotel, was in some cases due to a lack of demand but he added, civic leaders were also aware that there were a few situations where certain owners were just not doing their fair share to get those businesses rented out.

“Whether it was just sitting on them and holding on to them for investment or they bought the property so long ago, that they save more money on taxes by not renting them out, or whether (they were) just holding out for that top dollar, whatever it might be,” said Duley.

He said there are also businesses that go unmaintained and the city recognizes that may not be fair to neighboring businesses when these business have a negative financial impact on the community.

Duley said the chamber of commerce talked to the council about prospective developers who came to town and were scared off by blight and vacant businesses, adding they are still trying to come up with a solution to the problem.

“It’s been a struggle because you want to recognize and respect private property rights, but at the same time, you want to (acknowledge) the community cost of vacant buildings,” he said.

Potential changes

The city has been looking to come up with an ordinance that required a vacant building’s owner to register with the city, but Duley said it might be beneficial to both the city and the businesses to compile a registry of the vacant properties. Discussions regarding a proposed annual registration fee resurfaced.

“We haven’t gotten into what those fees might be,” said Duley. “I have people contacting me that are interested in establishing businesses in Willits. If I had a list to share with them with contact info of owner or property manager, maybe we could help facilities with those interactions and help businesses assist with finding tenants.”

Duley said city officials recognize when property owners have a tenant leave, there’s going to be some time needed to bring someone else in to occupy the property.

“The issue is we have a number of buildings that have remained vacant 5, 10 or 15 years, while there are many reasons why something might remain vacant for a year, there might be less reasons why some remain vacant 5 to 15 years.”

He said one of the other things he liked in the ordinance is that it requires out of the area owners to have a local property manager for city staff to contact.

“It clearly does a better job of dictating what we expect from the property owners aren’t maintaining and securing their properties,” he said. “It also requires an annual inspection of the fire and building departments.”

Duley said while talking to the fire department, city staff realized there’s only a handful of buildings where they have concerns. “They want to be able to get into the building, they realize that there’s been people squatting in there,” he said. “It’s important for building to get in there to make sure if the building has fallen in such disrepair, it’s now a health and safety hazard.

At that point he said it’s not just an issue for the property owner, but an issue affecting the whole community. “Those are the reasons behind those fire and building inspections,” he said.

According to Duley’s analysis, there seems to be consensus from the city council that everyone should register, and when asked what that registration fee should be, council members agreed something around $100 per year was reasonable.

In addition, staff have been talking to the community about raising that fee over time.

“Year one it’s low, year five is substantially more,” Duley said. “We are trying not to punish those people that are doing everything right that they can to rent out their building, we’re really trying to get at those folks that aren’t doing right by the community,” he added whatever rules the city creates, they have to make sure they are applying them evenly across the board and fees have to be tied back to cost of services including inspections.

The committee members agreed a fine could be established for people who don’t follow the rules and regulations to allow the city to recoup costs associated with violations.

Council directed that businesses that don’t have any issues only pay for the initial registration. Duley said hopefully the businesses can reap the benefits of the registration fee by being on the city’s list provided to potential buyers or business interests.

Duley said someone can register a property and if they have no health and safety violations, they can just continue reregistering on an annual basis. Provided they are keeping the maintenance and keeping it secure, they can continue to keep their properties vacant.

Additionally, for the ordinance to take effect for properties with multiple units, as long as half of the units are rented out, property owners are not subject to having to register.

City attorney Jim Lance provided some additional language for the definition of vacant commercial buildings as well as addressing potential hotels and motels. Duley said it was always the intention to include vacant hotels and motels, adding the new version does a better job of clearly defining that these types of properties are subject to the ordinance.

Local retailer Amanda Knodle questioned the city’s attempt to force tenancy obligations through the time established by the ordinance for owners to find a renter.

“If you are going to pay an annual renewal fee and you are required after 90 days to register, this doesn’t seem like really enough time,” she said.

Dusty said property owners would pay $100 after 90 days of their properties being vacant, and whenever that registry happens, if it hasn’t been renewed for a year property owners would then be subject to paying the registration fee.

“I keep thinking that it’s worth something to register your property,” he said, adding the chamber would have access to the list and the city and chamber would be essentially matching interested parties up.

Greta Kanne, owner of the Book Juggler, gave her input on the ordinance’s registration proposal.

“One of the things when we were first talking about this ordinance last year, one of the reason we came to this 90 day idea is that the majority of vacant buildings along Main Street have been vacant for years,” Kanne, said. “So if we said ‘OK after a year you need to register’ that’s giving some of those businesses that have been vacant for 10 years or more a whole other year, and what we are saying is lets just get them registered as quickly as possible so that we can move this process forward and start reminding some of these property owners to clean up their stuff.”

The committee also discussed the definition of blight and agreed that it needs to be better defined and incorporated into the text of the ordinance.

“From my understanding the intention of this wasn’t to force occupancy upon property owners, but it was to force them to at least maintain a reasonable standard of appearance because the better everything looks,” Kanne said. “The better everything is for the rest of the business community.”

Ariel Carmona Jr. has served as The Willits News as City Editor/reporter since Fall 2016. Carmona grew up in the Southern California region in Los Angeles where he cultivated an appreciation for good food, family and community oriented journalism. Prior to joining The Willits News, Ariel was a columnist at the Valley Daily Post, a hybrid newspaper website in Espanola, in Rio Arriba County and covered education in the Northern New Mexico region for the Rio Grande Sun. He also worked as a reporter for the hyperlocal Community Impact chain of newspapers based out of Pflugerville, Texas. He received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and an M.A. in Communications from California State University Fullerton. Ariel has written for various print and online publications including the San Gabriel Valley Tribune in West Covina ,California, AOL Patch media, the Orange County Register and the Walnut Weekly News in Walnut, CA where he served as sports editor and as a general assignment reporter. In late fall 2018, Ariel began covering Mendocino County for the Ukiah Daily Journal.